Consequences of failing to update register of interests

Question

A parish councillor (not on the same council as me) became a director of a company more than 2 months ago according to companies house.  They have not notified the clerk nor updated the register of interests.  Does anyone know the potential consequences of this?  My understanding is that a councillor must inform the monitoring officer within 28 days of any change in registerable interests and failure to do so is a criminal offense.

Does anyone have any experience of anything ever happening to a councillor who has failed to declare such an interest which has been later discovered by the monitoring officer?  Thanks

Answer 1

It is the councillor's responsibility to update their register of interests.  If you become aware of someone who hasn't, a complaint can be made to the monitoring officer but in reality all that will happen is that the MO will encourage the individual to put this right.  Technically, failure to register a DPI is a criminal offence but I suspect the first line by the police would be to similarly encourage the individual to update their register too.  I am aware of a case locally when a police officer did investigate an allegation of failure to declare but I don't think a prosecution followed.

Comments

Thanks for your quick response.  I rather suspected that this would be the case, and I suppose on balance is the pragmatic course of action.

Answer 2

To be frank no one is bothered in fact does anyone know of any cases where action has been taken ?
I personally know of a case where a Councillor failed to declare a large contract with their own Council ( how they got it is another mystery ) didn’t declare their employment or even where they lived or details about their spouse and absolutely nothing happened

Answer 3

It is a strict liability offence to fail to complete or update a register of disclosable pecuniary interest - I could supply the reference but it would be about as pointless as seeking to gain a prosecution - even in a strict liability offence.
I do have 1st person experience of reporting a failure to declare a contract with the PC and land ownership which was subject to substantial capital value increase after planning application for which subject Cllr was engaged in PC consultation.
Cut & dried pecuniary gain in relation to non disclosure of a disclosable pecuniary interest.
Rather than reporting via MO due to known complete lack of interest, it was reported to local constabulary for investigation.
Despite the constable having personal PC experience and wholly embracing the scope and significance of the legislative requirement, when referred up, the powers that be sent it sideways to MO as a prosecuting authority and MO declared that “so long as it was corrected” there was no public interest in a prosecution.
You’d just as well piss up the wind….

Comments

Well what else can you expect when MP's in our parliament openly flaunt principles and required honesty and openness on almost a daily basis?

Answer 4

This same issue happened in my council, so what happened is on their forms their is an email that you can email in the district council depending on who you are with,( i assume other district councils will possibly have the same system) You just inform them of the situation, and tell them what company if you have that information, in our case they didn't actually do anything other than get the whole council to re-write their forms, and the clerk took full responsibility for it. But despite it saying it's a criminal offence i'm guessing it's at the discretion of the district council as to what actions they take. There is also a system in our district where you can report a specific council member..tho i wasn't too comfortable about the suggestion of giving my phone number to the person i was complaining about.

Comments

I probably should add, if you have any evidence in general keep it, If say they failed to disclose a business it could be that they didn't understand the form, but it should be explained to them properly, but pointing out that you are aware of this information due to something on company house would probably get the ball rolling to at least make sure there is some accountablity